


Price for a Life

by avtorSola



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Angst, Gen, KilluGon? Sort of, M/M, Oneshot, Tragedy, friendship or romantic, whatever really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-08 00:59:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16419401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avtorSola/pseuds/avtorSola
Summary: Gon wakes up in the hospital after his battle with Pitou, fully healed, and Killua is there to greet him. But he thought he'd already given up everything for Kite and his revenge.Well. Not everything. Not yet.If only Killua wasn't so giving.A what-if story, where Nanika's healing comes with a cost.





	Price for a Life

He wakes up with a start, like some loud noise had startled him from sleep. There are voices around him, startled and weeping, laughter ringing in the air as the ceiling comes into focus over his head. He blinks, and suddenly Morel is there, wearing hospital clothes, leaning over him with a relieved smile and suspiciously damp cheeks. Past the large man Gon can see a woman in purple who smells like Palm, but different, and two women in suits.

“You’re finally awake, are you?”

The voice is light but warbles with stifled emotion, and Gon throws himself forward in the hospital bed.

“Killua!”

His friend is sitting on a bench at the foot of his bed, a little girl with choppy dark hair asleep in his lap. The blue gaze wavers, fading to grey for a moment like the world’s gone dark around him. Something isn’t right. Where’s Pitou? Where is he? The last thing he remembers-

Blue eyes lit with terror, a thin voice screaming his name, lightning flickering and dying as the world exploded into nothing.

“You scared everyone, you idiot,” Killua scolds softly. He’s shaking faintly, hands running through the little girl’s hair. The two women by the door must be butlers, from the Zoldycks’ house. Gon looks down at himself, at his unblemished body, at his hands – _both of them_.

“…Killua, what happened?”

The question makes the butlers tense up but Killua just glares at them with puffed-out cheeks. He clears his throat.

“My sister healed you,” he proclaims triumphantly, still glaring at the two butlers like he was personally offended by their existence. “And now she’s tired, so she’s sleeping. But you’re…you’re an idiot, Gon. Never do that again.”

Pitou had been dead on the second punch, Gon knows, skull shattered into fragments, but the world had been a haze of pain and grief and Killua’s wide gaze, made crystal with Nen. He lowers his gaze to the bed he’s in, still baffled. He’d given up his everything to kill Pitou. How had he been healed? Killua stays quiet for a long minute, his shaking hands soft on his little sister’s head. He’s so gentle with her. Morel stands slowly, his IV stand rolling gently on the floor.

“Gon, kid,” Morel said solemnly. “What you did was beyond reckless. It was blatantly stupid. Kite wouldn’t have wanted you to kill yourself for revenge. Especially since he’s alive.”

It stops all thought. Gon turns to face Morel, feeling sick and breathless. Killua’s shoulders slump down in something like relief, or disappointment, or even sadness. It had all been futile then. Everything he’d sacrificed – and had gotten back, mysteriously – had been for nothing. The thought of all the things he’d said, to Pitou, to Palm, to Killua.

Oh _god,_ what he’d said to Killua.

“Kite’s…alive?”

Morel nods, setting a large hand on his shoulder, eyes hidden behind round discs of black glass. It feels heavy.

“He was reborn as an Ant,” Morel says, and there’s a terrible emptiness behind the words. Killua coughs faintly in the background of Gon’s world falling apart. He’d sacrificed his everything for nothing at all. He’d said so many terrible things to the one person who had come after him even after he’d given everything up.

Well. Not everything. Killua hadn’t left.

And then the old woman butler cries out, and there’s a soft thump, like an old book being dropped on a table. Gon turns and his eyes go wide. He leaps from the bed, panic striking at his heart like fire, and beats the old woman to Killua’s side. His best friend smiles faintly up at him, blue eyes turning grey, blood on his lips. The little girl that was in his lap is awake now, staring at her brother on the floor with horror in her eyes.

“Killua!”

White hair shifts. Killua rolls onto his side, sluggishly, like he’s exhausted just from moving. Morel brushes off the butlers, snapping about doctors and rest, and _what’s going on_? They let him pass and he leaves in a puff of white. Gon reaches out then pauses, staring as Killua coughs again and blood comes up. He feels helpless again. Powerless and weak again.

He hates it, so _much._

“Gon…Gon, I’m okay.”

Killua is smiling still – _why is he smiling? Why is he lying?_ – and he forces himself up, to sit up against the bench. The little girl bursts into tears suddenly, crying violently and incoherently. It snaps something in Gon’s composure. His hand completes the motion, and Killua slumps against his shoulder, trembling weakly. The butlers kneel down around them, the old woman carefully taking one of Killua’s pale hands in hers. Her wrinkled face is caught by shock.

“What _happened_ , Killua?”

This- Killua wasn’t like this. This wasn’t what he remembered when he’d traded everything for Pitou’s death. This Killua wasn’t the friend he’d been- he’d been ready to leave behind.

The thought feels like poison. But Gon knows that’s what he’d done, in the worst way possible.

“…Alluka healed you,” Killua murmurs softly. His voice warbles again. “…there’s always a price.”

The floor feels like it’s suddenly disappeared, gravity bending into a loop so he’s forever falling. His stomach rises towards his heart. Carefully, he wraps an arm around Killua’s waist, holding on tightly, as if a mere grip will prevent the last bit of his everything from slipping away. He swallows hard, and his friend sighs weakly, body limp.

“How do I fix you?” he asked, desperate. “Killua, how do I undo it?”

His best friend sighs against his side again, breath fluttering, and coughs harshly. Above him, his sister – Alluka? – cries harder.

“Y-you can’t,” she whimpers, sobbing miserably into her hands. “Tsubone, Onii-chan…Onii-chan told…told Nanika _no.”_

Something breaks deep inside Gon’s chest, cracking apart even though he doesn’t understand Alluka’s tears.

“Killua- Killua, why would you-”

His best friend smiles just as Morel returns, a doctor in a long white coat running behind with two nurses and a gurney.

“You…you’ve got Kite,” Killua whispers, his breath faint. “You don’t need me…need me anymore.”

It’s the last thing he says before the doctor kneels over him, pressing a hand to the side of Killua’s pale neck, another sliding a stethoscope under the blue shirt. There’s a breathless moment of silence, where Gon can’t speak because _how when why_ does Killua think that Gon doesn’t need him anymore?

_You have it easy, Killua. Since it means nothing to you._

And then he’s yelling desperately, Killua lifted by unfamiliar men onto the gurney as Morel holds him back. The white head rolls back, blood still staining Killua’s pale lips, grey shadows under his dulling eyes. How has this happened so quickly?

“Killua! Killua, you can’t _do_ this!” he screams, fighting as Morel wrestled with him. Killua doesn’t say anything, just smiles, lying far too still to be natural, his eyes closing. Alluka is still sobbing into the palms of her hands. The younger butler looks stricken.

And then the doctors are moving, taking Killua away, and the younger woman follows, running, panic flaring across her face. Morel still has a tight grip on Gon’s torso and hands, holding him gently as he fights to go after his friend. He’s sobbing uncontrollably, the only thing sticking in the back of his skull that he hurt Killua. That he left Killua behind.

And his friend…had accepted it.

When he sees Killua again, hours later, his friend is the one lying in bed, dressed in hospital clothes. He’s asleep or unconscious, or worse – _no, it’s Killua- Killua is always there for him, always –_ and there is a needle taped into his arm, a thin tube under his nose. The Zoldyck butlers are there with him and the little girl with Killua-blue eyes and dark hair, who’s pale and solemn at her brother’s side. They don’t say anything when he comes in, and neither does Knuckle, who’s taken Morel’s place shepherding him around.

He skips the chair, climbing onto Killua’s bed and curling up against his friend’s side. Killua doesn’t stir- he doesn’t even move a little bit. Not until he coughs again, and the older butler reaches forward to wipe the blood from his lips. It’s the stillest he’s ever been, and it’s terrifying, even worse than the fright in Kite’s eyes and the dragging poison weight of Neferpitou’s Nen.

Gon falls asleep to the sound of Killua’s heart struggling in his chest.

 

He wakes to a Nen contract fulfilled, and silence.

_He’s lost everything._


End file.
